Holy Crap. Taken out by a d!$k pick?

[Dajenarit]

The race is tightening and theres word indictments are coming down the pipe. A whole lot of other weird shit coming out of wikileaks. Wow, what an election....

The Clinton crime family gets taken down by a dick pick addiction and we might just get President Trump after all. I hope people come to there senses and vote Green.

Beam me up Scotty...

[Peacedog]

Politics, and politicians specifically, is not a profession. It is not even a career field with clearly definable metrics, training programs, etc.

Expecting professional, or even ethical behavior, from a bunch of people who are at best attention whores is probably a bit of a stretch unless the cultural paradigm demands a certain level of restraint.

[Dmitri]

Boy was that a biased report from RT or what!

I hope people come to there senses and vote Green

That's not what the polls are showing unfortunately. The polls are showing that any non-two-party vote will be effectively a vote for "the other" of the main two candidates.
(And Clinton's a lot "greener" than Trump.)

[Steve James]

Meh, D., I doubt that anyone is changing their position based on anything that comes out now. Afa claims of influence peddling by the Clintons, I think of Cheney and Halliburton. When I hear about deaths in Benghazi, I recall the hundreds killed during the Bush years, with not a single investigation or trial. Neither of those things, however, or the claims of WMDs, or the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis deaths, thousands of US deaths, or trillions of dollars spent have ever made me consider Dubya was unqualified to be president.

So, the presentation of claims that the Clintons profited from Bill having been president isn't especially surprising. Afa the unauthorized Clinton servers, the fact that she had them is bad, but hardly unpardonable. (Ford pardoned Nixon for his crimes, but those were different times). What would be more important is showing that any information on those servers led to any deaths of transmission of sensitive information. If the material contained sensitive info, Wikileaks released it, and we would probably know. Rather, the majority of the emails that have been used against Clinton (even though they weren't even Hillary's) have focused on how discussions where negative things were said about people. "Ooh, did you hear what she said about Sander's supporters?" "Podesta said xyz about Catholics." Etc.
Btw, the claim about paying people to incite Trump supporters was serious, but it didn't come out of any emails.

Of course, if it weren't for the fundamental hypocrisies of Trump calling Clinton a crook and a liar --which is in fact something he has called every single one of his competitors-- I would take the revelations more seriously. But, it still wouldn't be enough to make me say that Clinton shouldn't be president. If it were a choice between Bush and Hillary, I'd choose Hillary. If it were between her and Obama, I'd choose Obama. In fact, although it was predicted here that we'd all be moaning and groaning if he were elected, he will leave with a higher approval rating than Reagan.

The problem with this election is that whoever wins will be unpopular. And, that's too bad. However, even former Republican candidates have come straight out and said that many of the nominees statements do not reflect traditional American values. For example, the suggestion to increase the use of torture, the institution of religious tests for citizenship or office, and changing the 14th Amendment. It's true that there are many who believe those thing are good or necessary. That's also too bad. It doesn't bother me that I'm on the side opposite the KKK, KGB, fake fundamentalists, or even the FBI.

Shucks, I don't want my kids to think that I was undecided. I'll accept the results, just as always. I just want to see where the nation stands. Forget what the candidate does as president. Well, I'd buy an electric car before I'd vote for Stein. Gary Johnson's positions are untenable. If they weren't, he'd be the Republican nominee.

[Dajenarit]

Well you're right that politicians are basically untouchable. This basically hinges on whether or not they move forward with indictments, but its still looking like Hillary is damaged goods because of the reopening of the investigation no matter the contents of the revelations. Comey did a number on her and this will be fuel for the Republicans to stall even worse than Obama for the next 4 years. Which might actually be a good thing....

[KEND]

And now comey retracts accusations. Was it a setup, did he get 10 mil. from the Clintons and doublecross the kochbros, did they threaten him ---whatever it was its unlikely to come out. You are right about politicians, across the pond the chilcot report which implicated blair is hardly mentioned, its brexit that dominates the media.
Incidentally did you see the Donald baby kissing act , [pity it didn't crap on him] a scene worthy of monty python. In any other context he would have been led off in handcuffs.

[grzegorz]

Boy was that a biased report from RT or what!

Ya think?

Couldn't be...

[Dajenarit]

Because nooo, people are never biased one way or the other. The world is just complete equivalence. All opinions are equal, all points of view matter and nothing is ever right or wrong in our post modern world.

But back in reality though, even taking into account that a fair amount of what was said was in fact opinion, the actual facts of the entire situation still has be to be dealt with. I highly doubt Hillary will be indicted and she most likely will be our next President. This re-opening of the investigation makes me wonder just how damaged and lame-ducked she'll be during the reign though. It'll be something if Republicans, which I wouldn't put pass them, try to impeach her right after her inauguration if even worse news come out of these leaks. Talk about government grinding to a halt. I'm wondering if her donors are going to quietly jump ship and look for a plan B and C. It'd be the height of irony and hilarity if a dick pick, not even belonging to Bill, puts the Clintons in jail after all.

So yea politics are a man made illusion but, unfortunately it has world changing consequences. Its beyond frustrating when no matter which Demoplubican you vote for, we always end up regressing, except for those select few on top of the capitalist/aristocratic heap. I could care less about the perception of the chances of a third party candidate. If Americans acted like adults and showed some cojones, a third party candidate could of been elected decades ago. Our policies would of been radically different if we nutted up generations ago. But we've been indoctrinated to always support the aristocratic class in an election and the cognitive dissonance and manufactured distractions has everyone so psychological damaged we don't know up from down. Solve societal problems? How the fuck do you do that? Me no know. Cut taxes I guess... The earth is gonna go before capitalism does imo, sadly.

Then worse still we keep buying that lesser evilism mythology to justify apathy and cowardice. The older heads have the nerve to tell the younger generation they're wrong for opting out but yet they leave us a twisted society, a broken economy and a dying planet. Then I have to prepare for and explain this shit to my own kids. They're more fucked than my own generation if climate change if gonna hit as bad as the consensus says (as reliable as that is). We have to plot a course for survival, for a situation never before dealth with in humanities history all while sloggin through the goddamn rat race for our little 2pence, with whatever remaining bit of of mental and physical energy that can be mustered from the days daily allotment of bullshit. So yea I mean it when I say wise up and vote Green. We have to man the fuck up right here and now and make serious changes before the clock most people don't or didn't even know existed runs out.

The FOH with Clinton and Trump. All they both offer is more war, fracking, pipelines and nuclear reactors. More wage slavery, more police state. And on it goes.

How do people even decide which is the lesser evil? Its a fucking joke.

[Dajenarit]

This late nite rant brought to you by Baltika # 7. And unfortunately for me there is no early voting in New York so I have to think about this shit for a nother day.

[Dajenarit]

Jimmy Dore coming with the absolute uncut truth as usual.

[Michael]

Having a lame duck president would be great for Wall Street as it would prevent decisive action to regulate them properly, even if the Dems get control of Congress, so that's probably what Comey's announcement / non-announcement amounts to. Hey, hey, look, look over here!! Then two days before election, nope, the other dude's computer is not relevant, so just ignore and I can say I didn't do nuttin'.

[Dajenarit]

Thats the thing though. Comey for however you feel about his actions was between a rock and a hard place. He rightfully took heat for dropping this on the public days before the election, but then again, if he waited till after Hillary won and it came out that she did something indictable, he would of seemed like a shill. He had to have known that this would cause his immediate termination in a Clinton presidency, especially taking into account her likely-hood of winning. So I'm interested to know the level of alleged internal dissent in the bureau or whatever other possible reason, that would cause the FBI director to play the hand that he did.

There is already the perception that Hillary is receiving favoritism from the political and media establishment and thats not completely wrong. She's a known element and predictably in the bag of the elite who run Washington and Wall street. Trump is the wild card, the loose cannon slash outsider. Money alone doesn't equal acceptance. So as deporable as both candidates are, predictability becomes an asset in Hillary's favor.

[KEND]

A perceptive article by Maureen Dowd going beyond the demonizing of Trump and Clinton. Interestingly enough I met Trump in the early 70's on an engineering project, he was at that time the opposite of his latest manifestation

THE END IS NIGH
Maureen Dowd NOV. 5, 2016
WASHINGTON — When historians write about this bizarre, ugly and dispiriting campaign — and oh, my, will they ever! — the epic dark saga will unfold this way: A man, filled with fear and insecurity, created a hatemongering character and followed it out the window. And a woman, filled with fear and insecurity, hunkered down and repeated bad patterns rather than reimagining herself in an open, bold way.
When Donald Trump moved to Manhattan from Queens, drawn by the skyscrapers and models with sky-high legs, he felt he needed to invent a larger-than-life character for himself.
Author and former ABC correspondent Lynn Sherr remembers that back in 1975, Trump had a starter apartment down the hall from her at 65th and Third, and she saw different women in cocktail dresses leaving almost every morning.
“I think he felt it wasn’t a fancy enough place for them,” Sherr said. “That was the beginning of the gilt and marble.”
Trump started hanging out at Yankee Stadium with a group of towering characters — George Steinbrenner, Roy Cohn, Rupert Murdoch and Lee Iacocca. Sometimes Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant would stop by. Donald modeled himself on these men, living large and talking big. From Cohn, he learned about winning, without regard to right and wrong. And from Steinbrenner, he learned about indiscriminately grabbing the limelight. As Trump once said to his Yankee pals, “good publicity, bad publicity, as long as it’s publicity.”They would sit in Steinbrenner’s suite at a big conference table watching Reggie Jackson slug home runs on TV. They got together all over town, especially at Elaine’s and Le Club, a hub in Midtown for wealthy guys, models and actresses.
“Donald was not a big night life person, except for Le Club,” said one former Steinbrenner staffer. “He was always very likable in those days. He had a big personality, but he was the youngest of the group. He was never arrogant or full of himself. He always was respectful and pleasant to everybody.”Steinbrenner taught his protégé too well. When Trump asked his pal for the contract to build the new Yankee Stadium, the Boss said no. “If I do that,” he said, “it’s gonna be Trump Stadium, not Yankee Stadium.”In those days, when Trump showed up at sporting events, he paraded around with beautiful women, but he seemed to be in on the joke.
“You felt he was winking at you, as though he were saying, ‘Hey, kid, what do you think? You could be successful like me,’” said one sports executive who ran into Trump at basketball games.Before he jumped into the presidential race, Trump was seen as bombastic, vulgar, a bit of a buffoon and a cave man, but there was also, as Tina Brown put it, “a cheeky brio.” He was not regarded as a bigot or demagogue. He was seen as a playboy, not a predator. And when he leveraged up to “The Apprentice,” as his biographer Gwenda Blair notes, “he was set up as the Decider and a very discerning judge of character.”If he had stuck with his judicious TV boss persona in a race that fused politics, social media and reality TV, who knows what would have happened?
another character for the Republican primaries, playing to the feral instincts of angry voters, encouraging violence at his rallies, hatred toward journalists and disrespect for democracy itself. “He’s so used to playing a role in different areas of his life,” said Donny Deutsch, the ad man and TV personality who appeared on “The Apprentice” a few times and was once friendly with Trump. “He saw the crowd’s adulation and it drove him. He started to get the biggest cheers for saying the most offensive things.
“He detached himself from himself. I don’t think he believes in the Muslim ban or half the things he’s saying. It was more, ‘If this gets applause, I do it,’ in a Pavlovian dog kind of way. He just got into this character. He was so taken with the whiff of his own musk. And the irony of all this is, he didn’t have to. He could have run as an outsider with a populist message without all the evil and mean components.”
Hillary Clinton could also have run without indulging her worst instincts. People have been telling her since Wellesley that she should be the first woman in the Oval Office. And after Barack Obama usurped her in 2008, she had eight years to figure out how to run and govern without surrendering to traits that have so often proved self-defeating and exhausting. But the first day of her Senate confirmation hearings for secretary of state is the day she registered her server domain name: clintonemail.com. It was a reckless and entitled move that drew the F.B.I. into the election and set off a frenzy among House Republicans, who are now threatening years of investigations during a Clinton administration and talking impeachment months before she would even be inaugurated.
Hillary started as a young lawyer on the House Watergate committee, yet she never learned how paranoia can act as an acid on dreams. She couldn’t dismantle her wall of secrecy and defensiveness and level with the public and the press; instead, she built the wall higher and clung to attack dogs like David Brock and Sidney Blumenthal, needing to surround herself with people, no matter how dubious, who would walk the plank for her. In the hacked emails, the candidate’s advisers Neera Tanden and John Podesta recoil from the Hillary henchmen. When Brock attacked Bernie Sanders about his health during the primaries, Tanden worried about Hillary’s trust in the “kind of a nut bar” Brock: “Hillary. God. Her instincts are suboptimal.”About Blumenthal, the Hillary consigliere who helped smear Monica Lewinsky and was part of the ethically blurry Clinton Inc., Podesta said to Tanden: “It always amazes me that people like Sid either completely lack self-awareness or self-respect. Maybe both. Will you promise to shoot me if I ever end up like that?” And why didn’t Hillary retire the Smithsonian-worthy tin cup? The Clintons have earned $230 million over the last 15 years, and if Hillary becomes the first woman president and Bill becomes the first first lad, they will reap many tens of millions more in book money and speeches afterward. So why buckrake on the eve of her campaign with Goldman Sachs speeches?
On the cusp of becoming Hillary’s campaign manager, Robby Mook called it “troubling” that Goldman Sachs was going to host a Clinton Foundation event. In the leaked emails, Hillary’s advisers also worried that she has an apology “pathology,” as Tanden put it to Podesta, fretting about Hillary’s inability to offer a sincere apology for putting classified information at risk with rinky-dink servers.They worry that her battles have made her so guarded that she can’t convey authentic emotions. “Eventually she will sound like a human,” Tanden said.Her staff tried to script spontaneity. Tanden suggested having a party where Hillary could “let loose” to music and have a beer and maybe it would go viral.And even Chelsea was concerned about the foundation’s ethical morass.
The problem with Donald Trump is: We don’t know which of the characters he has created he would bring to the Oval Office.
The trouble with Hillary Clinton is: We do know. Nobody gets less paranoid in the White House.

[Steve James]

Nobody gets less paranoid in the White House.

Could be true, but it's impossible to prove. Assuming it's true, it's something we know about both candidates. At this point, I think it's useless to debate each candidate's degree of paranoia. It'd make more sense, imo, to debate the candidate's views on the environment, taxes, women's rights, immigration, Muslims, and sure the prison and military industrial complex, race relations, religion and poverty could also be addressed. But, that's a bit much to expect, at least in the "medias."

Otoh, it's ironic how, for example, the Clintons making millions is considered corruption (though they release their tax documents and have paid taxes) while Trump's losing millions and not paying taxes, and not releasing tax documents is considered smart. It's easy to demonize either candidate. But, they're still vying for a job with specific requirements, not a popularity contest.

Actually, I'm not sure I'd be sorry if the Supreme Court stayed with an even number of justices.

Afa lame duckness, they said the same thing about Obama; but, he managed to get some big things done.

Afa lesser of two evils, I wouldn't have ever voted if I had to choose a "good" candidate. People have waited all their lives to vote, most often for someone they knew would not change their lives. Yet, their vote was an indication of their hope. That's the only reason I'm here. So, I do what I think they would want me to do.

[vadaga]

I do think that the next president having control over selection process for several supreme court justices should be a deciding factor...